Today the holder of a $62.8 million Powerball ticket stepped forward. The ticket was plucked (or at least that’s how I picture it – plucked, from a glass bowl) days ago. It took until today for the winner to come forward. Turns out he’s an auto mechanic from a small town in northern New Mexico. You can read about him at this link.

This post isn’t about winning the lottery; it’s actually a list of topics we might use to inspire our writing on red Ravine, today or tomorrow or later this year. Plucked out of a notebook or computer file somewhere. Just the ticket we’ll need to break through, chuck our day jobs, and become famous.

Or not.

They say people who become instant millionaires go on to have tragic post-lottery lives. Take Jack Whittaker who won $314 million (before taxes) or Mack Metcalf who with his wife won $34 million. Read about how their lives changed for the worse after they won the lottery.

Writing is hard work. There is no winning lottery ticket. Days like today I wish there were. Either that or I wish I weren’t so compelled to write. Today I’m anything but inspired.

And that’s why I’m here, writing this post. Making a list of topics I’m going to keep in mind for my writing practices in the coming weeks. Use them if you’re so inclined. Just remember, not a one of them is going to land you where you want to go. Only hard work and persistence – a dedicated practice – will get us there.

What could be better than fresh grits, hot from the stove (smothered in butter and cheese), scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and French Roast? For lunch we had pimento cheese sandwiches, peanut butter pie, and sweet iced tea.

For the family gathering tonight, my brother made banana pudding. My sister made a turtle cake. There will be Southern potato salad, macaroni and cheese, and a pineapple angel food cake.

That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Food is grounding. And in writing, it’s something you can really sink your teeth into. Food shapes more than the body. Food is about culture. I bet if you listed all the foods in your family history, there would be a story in every dish.

Mom doesn’t cook much anymore. But when I’m home, I get as much in the way of homestyle Southern cuisine as I can.

It’s just hard to find grits in the Midwest. And it’s even harder to find sweet tea almost anywhere but South.

Arrived safely into Baltimore after an hour delay in the flight. I had the very last window seat on the left side of a plane filled with chatty middle school kids, a toddler, and a screaming baby one aisle over. I’m not complaining. I was happy to catch the flight. I practiced just sitting.

My mother and brother were there to meet me at the gate with open arms. They were a sight for sore eyes. After the hour and a half drive north, I walked back into the Pennsylvania home where I spent my teenage years, and the first thing I said was, “Smells like home!”

“Smells like home,” Mom repeated and kind of smiled as she hugged me and went through the daily mail. I’m tired tonight. Not much umphhh left. I bet you’ll find typos and rambling sentences in this post. But I wanted to get the aerials on the page.

What I realized is that the area around Baltimore is even more lush and green than Minnesota. You don’t get the patchwork quilt of fallow fields or the splat of glacial sky puddles. But you do get jigsaw forests and sea inlets, briny make up of a showdown between aquamarine salt and bluesy freshwater.

And I think that’s the beginning of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, though I don’t know for sure. I’ve driven it a few times on the way to Ocean City, Maryland with my family. But from the air, and with my spatial ineptitude, I could be staring at a foot trail through the Rockies, and I might not know it. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong. I wish I had shot this last one a few hundred feet forward. That’s when the bridge opened up to the huge expansiveness that it really is.

Alas, it’s time for bed. I’m downloading on dial-up and all my electronic gizmos, cords, and gadgets are spread out on the bed. It takes an arsenal to travel and capture the subtle nuances of the environment. Changes from day to day.

Already I’ve talked to my step-dad and we might make a journey to Tennessee to see the places where I spent some of my younger years. He said most of the houses are still standing. My brother said he’d fire up his GPSr so Mom and I might be able to do some geocaching in Georgia and South Carolina. Mom and I talked about Savannah over dinner at Rock-It Pizza & Subs down the way. And I tried to track down the address of my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Juarez.

Let the sleuthing begin. So far, so good. I’ve called many places home. But of all of them, this place smells the most like what I remember as home. The house noises are starting to resonate. My mother has lived here over 40 years. A long time. And at the same time, only the blink of an eye.